Center for Community Informatics, Loyola College, Maryland

(as seen on the ciresearchers list) The Center for Community Informatics (CCI) at Loyola College in Maryland was established in January 2006 as an initiative of the Computer Science Department with support from the Sellinger School of Business. The CCI aims to engage Loyola College's students, faculty and staff in supporting the creation and deployment of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for community empowerment. During the Spring 2006 semester, the Computer Science Department equipped the CCI with an office and a software engineering laboratory. A graduate assistant was also assigned to support the CCI. A course in Community Informatics was offered in the graduate program in computing and an interactive web portal was created to support the evolution of a community-based virtual environment that promotes collaboration (http://cci.cs.loyola.edu). The pioneering course in Community Informatics featured distinguished speakers from sectors of the ICT for Development community. The following guest lecturers spoke to the group of students attending three Loyola campuses (Evergreen, Timonium, and Columbia) in an advanced distance learning classroom. * John Hatch - Microfinance * Alexander Nason - e-Health * Timothy Ney - Free Software * Dennis Dworkowski - Digital Telephony * Rob Davenport - Community Media * Connie Malamed - e-Learning * Joel Shroeder and Roselie Vasquez - Rural Communications Other topics addressed in the course included community telecenters, e-government, remote sensing and geographical information systems, wireless Internet, satellite communications and online communities. Each student developed a software project to be used in a community telecenter setting. The class visited the Village Learning Place telecenter in downtown Baltimore to obtain their inputs in the creation of the projects. The results are published in the Forums section of the CCI web portal. The students may continue the development of their projects as volunteers or carry them to other courses in the graduate programs in computing. Other students and volunteers can also contribute to the evolution of the projects. For example, an undergraduate class in Software Engineering developed the requirements for the Easy Desktop solution, a computer desktop interface for novices in computing. Student Projects in Development * Online community survey integration with Google Maps * CourseInfo, a telecenter training course management system * Virtual Cash Register, a web-based telecenter financial reporting system * Low-cost open source community video production and streaming * Open source community digital telephone services, a revolutionary way to provide local telephone services using a single computer server and wireless VoIP phones * Wireless mesh network prototype Student evaluations of the course provided positive feedback. Students expressed enthusiasm with the possibility of using their skills in information technology to promote social development. They also approved the methodology adopted in the course, where assignments complemented the talks. Whenever a guest speaker presented a technology such as digital telephony, the assignment linked the technology to the application in Community Informatics. Similarly, whenever the speaker talked about an application such as microfinance, the assignment would tie it to the technology that supports the application. The success of the first offering of the Community Informatics course is reflected in the CCI web portal (http://cci.cs.loyola.edu). Here students have contributed with content to the forums, web links and file download sections and submitted news from other websites. The course presentations are also available on the portal in slide and video streaming formats. The CCI website is now ready to be advertised inside and outside the Loyola College community. The CCI originated from the development of a rural telecenter project in Brazil. The experience led to the realization that Loyola College can play a pioneering role in enabling new technologies for poverty eradication. A research paper that describes the impact of the insertion of ICTs in Brazilian rural communities was presented at the IEEE sponsored International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development in May 2006 at the University of California at Berkeley. Poster - http://cci.cs.loyola.edu/docs/ictd2006_poster2.pdf Paper - http://cci.cs.loyola.edu/docs/ictd2006_paper.pdf The CCI Steering Committee is formed by representatives of Loyola College's students, faculty and staff. Among the activities planned by the committee are the promotion of the Digital Bridges Day as part of Loyola's Year of the City activities, meetings with other departments in the school to forge collaboration projects, the creation of an Advisory Board composed of distinguished members, and the closer integration of the CCI to the global community telecenter movement. We invite you to participate in our activities and contribute with your ideas, suggestions and actions. By registering in our website, you will be able to stay in touch with our project through our online discussions and reports. We look forward to your participation and support. ============================== Marco Figueiredo Affiliate Faculty - Director Center for Community Informatics (CCI) mafigueiredo@loyola.edu http://cci.cs.loyola.edu 202-276-8324 (cel)